It Is Said
by Kyasarin-Maarukeehii1
Summary: If souls were people, and if souls had tears, hers would have drowned the universe. If hearts could literally break, fall to shards and tear a person apart, cut by cut, wound by wound, there would have been nothing left of her. Oneshot. Character death.


Disclaimer: I don't own the wondrous Doctor Who; Moffat and the BBC wouldn't give it to me. Lord knows I don't have the money to actually buy it, and with what I did here I don't think they'd sell it to me anyways!

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It is said that there is a man, or was a man, once upon a time, that knew just about everything there was to know in the universe, and would tell it all to you with quite the edge of glee and then tell you the time on fifty different planets besides. Knowledge was his bread and butter, the universe his backyard and his playmate. He alone was the lord of Time, the last of its masters, as it were. And so this man, daft and brilliant and wonderful in all ways, traveled throughout the cosmos and knew all things and was grand, so grand. This man.

But once, just this once, he came to wish that he had never known anything at all.

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The Doctor had a way of knowing things well before anyone else ever had a chance of knowing them. The core of Anarax was about to cool and expand; he had known that over twelve-thousand years before the peoples of the planet below. The man on the telly was an alien; well, with those ears he couldn't have been anything _but_, but no matter. He'd known it. And there he was, once again, knowing things. Always.

His dear companion, the dearest of the dear, was pregnant. A little spark-of-life of a cell was dividing and growing in her womb, proving that once again human beings were truly miraculous creatures. A quick check of the screen in the infirmary had confirmed his suspicions; beside the digital readout of Rose was a smaller one, with a tiny note about proportions and such. Her baby, her little miracle. _Their_ little miracle.

In all of the centuries that the Doctor had roamed the universe, seeing all that there was to see, he had never fallen so deeply in love with anyone as he had with Rose. Tiny, sharp, fantastic Rose. Rose Tyler, shop girl and saviour of planets. Rose Tyler, resurrector and subsequent destroyer of the Dalek empire. Tyler, Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf. The rock and cheek to his chaos and also cheeky…cheek. His plus-one; his strong-wall. His best friend and though neither of them quite knew how it happened in the first place, his lover. She had been everything he needed and then some. She had brought him up from the pits of Hell and down from the heights of anger. She soared with him in ecstasy, saving the day and running through fire. She was his everything, his inside-and-out. And she loved him.

It took all of his will power not to pounce on who he thought to be the true love of his far-too-long life and announce the happy news. He glanced at the readout once more; just five days along. She wouldn't know herself for another two or three weeks, when she started feeling the symptoms. He could wait. Just a few weeks, and she could celebrate with him.

Linear time had never felt like such a strain to him as in that moment.

A couple of days later they were running from danger (again), saving the world (again), and had freed a little girl from the demons that haunted her and the aliens that preyed upon her. In his head the Doctor ticked off another day on his countdown; in as little as ten days his beautiful girl would be able to share in his joy.

He could hardly wait.

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He sat on the floor of the TARDIS, his back to the console and his spine curved to an impossible degree, as if he were trying to collapse in on himself. Maybe he was. Sobs wracked his body and he let out a wail, the ceiling echoing it back to his deaf ears. He felt nothing, save heartbreak. He heard nothing, save her scream as she fell toward the void. He saw nothing but her tear-streaked face, the look of anguish in her eyes as they drank in his face one last time.

When at last he uncurled and stood, the countdown was in the negative. She would have known of the miracle she carried no sooner than six days ago. But six days ago was three days too late. She had been gone then, taken from him by the only beings in the universe that he hated more than himself. He gave a shuddering gasp and stumbled from the console room, down the hall and into the infirmary. He fell onto the bed in front of the status readouts and was wracked with sobs once more. Where once there had been a little pinprick of light, a tiny thing in comparison to the silhouettes of himself and his blond wonder of a girl was nothing. His was the only shadow on the screen, and it was as if the universe were screaming one word at him.

Alone.

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They're standing on a beach in Norway, and it is the most alive, and the most numb, that he has felt in a long time. She's speaking, the wind from the sea whipping her words right from her mouth and into his waiting ears, her blond hair lashing her tear-streaked cheeks.

"There's five of us now. Mom, Dad, Mickey…and the baby." She says quite proudly, a bit hesitantly, and with so much hope in her eyes.

"You're not…." he says, because he's not sure if he should act excited, or surprised, or say, "_I __already __know, __my __love. __I __knew __all __along._"

"No," and she laughs, but he can see right through her, knows that the tears coursing down her face aren't from earlier; they are from a new wound, a shot straight through her heart. "It's Mum," she says, _you__'__re __lying __Rose __Tyler, __I __can __see __your __heart __breaking __in __your __eyes,_ "she's three months gone." _No __she__'__s __not, __you __are, __four __is __a __closer __guess, __really. __You__'__re __not __showing, __you__'__re __hiding __it. __Afraid. __Afraid __of __what __they__'__ll __think, __afraid __to __acknowledge __it. __Because __then __you__'__ll __have __to __remember. __Remember __me. _

He doesn't remember much of their conversation, until she gives her confession through shuddering sobs. She's told him that she loves him time and time again, in a thousand languages on a million planets, while running for their lives and while lying in each other's arms, but this time, just this time, those three words feel like a lance through his hearts, two fists shoving their way through his skin and bone to the beating flesh beneath, ripping them clean from his chest and throwing them far, far away. He keeps his mask (always the masks), afraid that if he lets himself break, he will never put himself back together again.

"Quite right, too." _I __love __you, __I __love __you __so __much. __You __and __our __baby, __I __will __never __stop __loving __you._ "And I suppose, if this is my last chance to say it," _because __it __is __and __I __will __never __see __you __again, __and __this __has __to __last __a __lifetime, __I __am __so __sorry, __so, __so __sorry,__ "_Rose Tyler-"

He's staring at the inside of the TARDIS and he searches franticly for the beach in Norway, any little hint that it is still there. But no; he ran out of time. The last lord of Time, and it has finally won.

A tear slips down his cheek and he gasps for air, his twin hearts breaking for the last time.

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For years he runs from the pain, taking on companions and doing more and more daring things, getting himself into scrapes that would have killed a lesser man. Martha tries to cozy up to him and he pushes her away. Donna, brilliant Donna, sees the weight of anguish that he bears on his shoulders and gives him the space he needs to grieve, the kinship he needs to heal. She is a friend, a comrade-in-arms, and he knows that he never would have made it through without her.

It might take a hundred-thousand years for this wound to heal, and he knows he must endure each and every second of it, whether he endures them in the proper order or not.

It has been a long while, nearly a century for him and almost three years for his ginger temp from Chiswick. Most of that time he spent alone, wandering aimlessly through space, sometimes taking down entire hostile races without so much as a word. Then there were those bright times, when Martha was by his side, or when Donna had his back. He could smile, then. He could let his pain show for just a little while, in the dark as he wandered the halls of his beautiful ship while his companion slept.

Sometimes the Doctor wonders if he might have been happier not knowing. Never knowing that, somewhere in the wide unknown, there was a child with her mother's eyes and her father's smile. Never knowing that, in the whole of the universe, and despite all of the wrong that he had done, she had been the one to love him. Never knowing her, with her sunshine hair and her blue-skies smile. Never knowing. Never feeling this deep, throbbing ache that coursed through every nerve, fell from his eyes and ghosted down his face in the quiet of the night. Never.

Never, he realizes, is something he can't bear to think about.

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He always knew she was brilliant, but she has outshone even her greatest moments. He wants to hug her, throw his arms around her and kiss her senseless, exclaim to the heavens every seemingly useless platitude and reassurance he has ever heard, tell her he loves her over and over, so that she will never doubt him. He doesn't, of course, because it is quite hard to give a proper embrace when shot and lying in the middle of the road, but by God does he wish he could have. Instead he shoves away his regeneration and they are off, flying to the rescue at a hundred miles a minute. It is only when her mother, and her father, and her ex- and his alter-ego's former best friend show up that he realizes that there is someone conspicuously missing.

She carries herself with dignity and strength, her eyes burning with all the determination of a wildfire in the summer heat. She cracks a grin and shoulders her gun, her eyes dancing with the light of seeing him again. But he knows her, knows her every in, every out, every which-way and side-ways. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes, or Nancy Drew, to see through the mask she built for herself a long, long time ago. All he has to do is to look behind that mask. What he sees breaks the hearts he hadn't thought could break again, shatters them into a million little pieces and scatters the dust across the galaxies.

If souls were people, and if souls had tears, hers would have drowned the universe. If hearts could literally break, fall to shards and tear a person apart, cut by cut, wound by wound, there would have been nothing left of her. Her eyes told of unimaginable pain, impossible loss, the grief of the lost and of the twice left-behind. Suddenly he couldn't look her in the eye, couldn't bear for her to see her own pain magnified in his own. There was no need for both of them to share in this torment, in the feeling of emptiness at one's side, where blond curls and chocolate-brown eyes should have danced, little hand clasped in much bigger, protective, loving, tight.

When pain is a private thing, it is easy to bury, to dig a hole and throw it in, lock it in a safe and throw away the key. But when the pain is shared, it becomes something, a creature that grows in the darkness of the heart, that tears apart and devours all that is left to shine a light in the world. It destroys that which is Happiness, or at least what is left of it. It shoots without asking, it takes no prisoners.

But, despite it all, the Doctor can't not know. It is like a plaster over a wound; he has to get it off quickly or he never will at all, but it has to come off whether he likes it or not.

And so, in a quiet moment, when there is no rushing or fighting, no guns going off and no people clamoring for her attention, he stands at her side and looks down at her pale face, framed by sunshine strands of silk-soft hair, and watches as a single tear rolls down her cheek and falls from her chin, splashing onto the table below. She trembles, biting her lip as another tear follows the trail of the first.

"What did you name her?" he asks, afraid to reach out to her, afraid that if he touches her she will crumble beneath her hurt.

"A-anna. I named her Anna." She says after a long moment, and she turns her head to look at him, her brown eyes swimming. The tears come now, fast and heavy. "Three weeks, Doctor, she was mine for three weeks and then…and then…." Silent sobs wrack her frame and he draws her into the circle of his arms, her hands fisted in his jacket and her head tucked beneath his chin. Her heart break darkens the front of his suit; its sound will echo in his mind for all of eternity. He knows then that he never could have let Rose bear this by herself. He feels hot tears pour from his eyes, and he knows.

It is said that there is a man, or was a man, once upon a time, that knew just about everything there was to know in the universe, and would tell it all to you quite happily and then tell you the time on fifty different planets besides. Knowledge was his bread and butter, the universe his backyard and his playmate. He alone was the lord of Time, the last of its masters, as it were. And so this man, daft and brilliant and wonderful in all ways, traveled throughout the cosmos and knew all things and was grand, so grand. This man.

But once, just this once, he knew that, no matter the pain, some things are to be known, to be remembered. Always.

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Thanks for reading! Please don't chase me with pitchforks!


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